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6 Responses to “Reposting: Jeff Goodell – “No One is Thinking About the Future””

Going to the library today to pick up “The Water Will Come” and “Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse”—-had them put on hold. Will be my first reads of the new year—-may as well start with something depressing.

Throughout 2017, billionaire-backed climate deniers gamed Google’s ad-placement network to put ads that defied the scientific consensus and sowed doubt at the top of searches for “climate change.” These deniers have deep warchests thanks to the hydrocarbon barons who’ve invested heavily in denying the scientific consensus on climate change in order to eke out a few more billions before the world burns and they retreat to their luxury bunkers.

In retrospect, it’s easy to see how this could happen. The people promoting the scientific consensus on climate are devoted to making web-pages and other information resources on the looming crisis. The people denying the consensus are devoted to figuring out how Google works and defeating its countermeasures. Because one group is devoted to climate and the other is devoted to tricking Google, even small insights gained by the latter team will translate into huge gains in the search results. (Google has long maintained that people who want to be highly ranked on its pages should focus on “making good sites,” not figuring out Google’s ranking systems).

This problem is exacerbated by Google’s shortsighted policies, which ban “deceptive advertising” but limit the definition of “deceptive” to lies about product pricing and other narrow matters, meaning that climate change denial is permitted under the rules.

“People always have been the foolish victims of deception and self-deception in politics, and they always will be, until they have learned to seek out the interests of some class or other behind all moral, religious, political and social phrases, declarations and promises.”

To me the saddest parts of TWWC were the descriptions of expensive engineering projects that would be both useless and even more expensive to upgrade if the “water event” occurred before the predicted scenario. Your zillion-dollar barrier system that was designed to deal with, say, three decades’ worth of SLR but becomes useless after, say, 15 or 20 years represents a great waste of community resources. Meanwhile, during the interim years most people who could afford to leave the area left, and the local tax base shrank.

About 2/3 of the way through TWWC—-an excellent read, and a good summary of all that has been said about SLR with some good “color” commentary. I too was saddened by reading about the the “engineering” efforts in places like Venice, Rotterdam, and NYC that will likely prove to be too little, too late. As RWG says, a great waste of resources and a disservice to those who will pay the price (although it’s hard to feel much sympathy for those who refuse to accept reality and say they just can’t imagine living anywhere else but near the water and will “go down with the ship”).

I am reminded of the philosophy expounded by some geologist in the book “Quakeland”. He said that plate tectonics has doomed us, even though it may take hundreds of thousands or millions of years for it to occur. He says we should therefore be “rational fatalists”, accept the science for what it is, know that we’re doomed, and just hope that the “big ones” don’t come too soon or too often.

PS Also picked up “Horsemen of the Trumpocalypse”. It is quite nauseating to see all the members of the Kakistocracy gathered together between two covers—just reading the table of contents and flipping through the book made me gag—-remember, MAGA means MA(GAG)A. It will be tolerable only in small doses.